Scotland

We’ve added 210,632 historical newspaper pages to the Archive in the last seven days. The latest additions include one brand new title – North Star and Farmers’ Chronicle. This Scottish paper was founded in 1893 and still exists today, now simply known as North Star. The paper mainly covers the old county of Ross & Cromarty taking in the towns of Dingwall, Tain, Alness and Invergordon. 835 issues of North Star and Farmers’ Chronicle, containing over 6,400 pages have been released spanning the years 1895-1903 and 1905-1911. …

We’re happy to bring you word of the latest additions to The British Newspaper Archive. Three new titles have joined the site along with updates to ten existing titles. Our new titles are from Jedburgh, Roxburghshire, Scotland; Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England; and Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, England: Jedburgh Gazette, Wisbech Standard, and Hunts Post, respectively. You can learn more about each of the titles we have added to this week by clicking on their names below. On each paper’s title page, you can learn more …

Tags

Halloween in communities How Halloween is viewed varies from place to place and its traditions are just as diverse. A sense of how Halloween is treated in a given place can be glimpsed in its portrayal in cinema, music, and literature. Treat yourself to a poem written on the topic by John Mayn, printed in 1805 in The Scots Magazine. A notice in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News mentioned a Halloween tradition practised in ‘olden times’ in Scotland. Another Halloween tradition we …

Tags

With Halloween approaching, we wanted to see what we could find related to the topic of hauntings in The British Newspaper Archive. Of children and hauntings Often the origins of a haunting myth are rooted in death and loss. Sometimes the myth grows and morphs to such a point where its origin is indeterminate. Other times, the sad truth of its origin is unexpectedly revealed, as with the ‘grim discovery’ at a ‘haunted house’ in 1921, reported in The Scotsman. …

Whilst Mothering Sunday is now commonly combined and celebrated with the secular holiday of Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom and Ireland, its origin is religious in nature and separate from that of the American Mother’s Day. Starting in the 1700s, individuals would attend a special service on Laetare Sunday (the fourth Sunday of Lent) at their mother church (usually the church where an individual was baptised or their local parish church/closest cathedral). This activity was soon coined as going …

We have added another fourteen brand new titles to the Archive this month. These include eight new titles for Scotland, six of these titles are for counties new to the archive and include coverage of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides and the Isle of Skye. We have also added additional pages for 42 other titles! The Archive now holds over 18 million pages of historic newspapers from the UK and Ireland. Click on each of the titles …

Tags

‘The awful catastrophe which occurred at the Tay Bridge on the last Sunday of the year is still the all-absorbing theme of conversation in the community…’ A section of the Tay Bridge, which connects Dundee and Wormit in Fife, collapsed during a terrible storm on the night of 28 December 1879. Tragically, a Dundee-bound train plunged into the freezing waters of the river, with the loss of 60 lives (although some estimate the loss to have been 75 lives). Graphic illustrated the scenes …

Tags

To celebrate St Andrew’s day, we have found are two newspaper stories (from 1920 and 1925) that explore the history/legend/myth of the national saint of Scotland. The British Newspaper Archive holds more than 100 Scottish newspaper titles. Scottish newspapers Register today!

Tags

‘Errand boy who became a millionaire’ Sir Thomas Johnstone Lipton, the Glasgow-born self-made man who worked himself up from errand boy to become a millionaire, died in London on 2 October 1931 – he was 81. Below is a newspaper report (published the day after his death) that offers an overview of Lipton’s amazing life and achievements. This image of Sir Lipton, shows him in the uniform of the City Lieutenancy. Discover more about Sir Lipton …

To celebrate the birthday of Robert Burns, we found a newspaper article from 1796 reporting on the life, death, and funeral of Scotland’s Bard and ‘peasant poet’ (hmm, it can be debated if he was a ‘heaven-taught ploughman’, as we suspect he read quite a bit whenever he had time!). As two of Burns’s most famous lines are: O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!